2016 ELECTION/INTELLIGENCE/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “President Trump plans to invite President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to visit Washington in the fall, the White House said Thursday [7-19-18] — an invitation that stunned the nation’s top intelligence official, who said he was still groping for details of what the two leaders had discussed in their encounter this week in Helsinki, Finland. ‘Say that again,’ the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, replied when Andrea Mitchell of NBC broke the news while interviewing him at a security conference in Aspen, Colo. ‘O.K.,’ Mr. Coats said, taking a deep breath and chuckling awkwardly. ‘That’s going to be special.’ The announcement came as the White House spent a third day trying to explain statements made by Mr. Trump after the Helsinki meeting, and as uncertainty spread throughout the government about whether he had reached agreements with Mr. Putin on Syria and Ukraine, leaving his military and diplomatic corps in the dark. Yielding to intense criticism, Mr. Trump rejected a proposal by Mr. Putin for Russia to question American citizens, including a former ambassador to Moscow, Michael A. McFaul, in return for giving the United States access to 12 Russian military intelligence officers indicted on charges of trying to sabotage the 2016 presidential election.”
-Mark Landler, “Trump to Invite Putin to Washington, Blindsiding His Intelligence Chief,” The New York Times online, July 19, 2018